MY SAY: BARRY GOLDWATER REMEMBERED
50 years ago, on October 27, 1964, Ronald Reagan delivered a stunning speech in support of the presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater. The rest is history…Goldwater lost and Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in 1980. But Senator Barry Goldwater ignited a Conservative renewal in America. Without him there would have been no Reagan Presidency.
He had warts. Big ones. He despised the Evangelicals and misunderstood them completely without realizing what a big role they were to play in a conservative revival. He also disliked Israel and made no secret of it.
But he had ideas….
Here are a few:
“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
Barry Goldwater
“Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism. Fellow Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people. ”
― Barry M. Goldwater
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.”
― Barry M. Goldwater
“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”
― Barry M. Goldwater
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